Tench Coxe ’80 has committed $5 million to create a new professorship focused on bringing the tools of scientific management to nonprofit and non-governmental organizations focused in areas such as health care operations, humanitarian logistics, global development, education, and government operations.
The Tench Coxe Distinguished Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business will be an outstanding teacher and researcher with an international reputation, whose academic passion is developing cross-disciplinary systems that can bring tangible solutions to service-delivery problems.
“Delivery strategies that work in the for-profit sector haven’t always translated well in organizations with social-service missions,” says Paul Danos, Tuck’s dean. “Scientific management has increased productivity in the manufacturing sector since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but the analytical strategies of quality improvement have yet to be effectively implemented in many social, not-for-profit institutions. The Coxe Professorship will be dedicated to that translation.”
The Coxe Distinguished Professorship is part of Dartmouth’s ongoing commitment to tackling global problems through the application of an interdisciplinary approach.
“The most critical issues we face today require innovative, multi-disciplinary solutions,” says Dartmouth President Carol L. Folt. “With this professorship, Tench Coxe is helping support the collaborative spirit and intellectual energy at Dartmouth and the Tuck School to extend valuable scientific management techniques to the social sector. This is an exciting opportunity to leverage and enhance the high-impact research produced at Dartmouth.”
Coxe, a managing director at the Silicon Valley technology venture capital firm Sutter Hill Ventures, says, “This professorship aims to close the gap between idea and execution in delivering on social goals. The analytically efficient delivery of services is an area ripe for improvement, with tremendous potential for societal benefit.”
Named to Forbes’ “Midas List” of top dealmakers in technology and the life sciences six years in a row (2002-2007), Coxe joined Sutter Hill in 1987. Before Sutter Hill, he began his career as a corporate financial analyst with Lehman Brothers, and then returned to his hometown of Atlanta to manage data communication products and direct internal management information systems and marketing with Digital Communications.
At Dartmouth, Coxe graduated with highest distinction in his major, economics. He earned two citations for exceptional academic work and won an economics prize—all while making All-Ivy in squash and serving as captain of the squash team.
After Dartmouth, he earned an MBA in 1984 from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business. He has provided significant philanthropic support to the anti-cancer LiveStrong Foundation.
